Piedras Blancas, which became an active rookery about 20 years ago (possibly individuals which found Año Nuevo too crowded as the species recovered after receiving protection). The Piedras Blancas population is much larger, and there's a boardwalk that takes you within 20 feet or so of the beach, and often there are elephant seals close enough to shoot with a 200mm or 300mm lens, including moms with pups.

Piedras Blancas, which became an active rookery about 20 years ago (possibly individuals which found Año Nuevo too crowded as the species recovered after receiving protection). The Piedras Blancas population is much larger, and there's a boardwalk that takes you within 20 feet or so of the beach, and often there are elephant seals close enough to shoot with a 200mm or 300mm lens, including moms with pups.

Sounds like it's worth a special trip. The interesting activity is mostly Jan and Feb, and I can't get there this month, so I'll have to remember to put it on my calendar for next year.

Just posted to draw attention to the amazing bit of research about these guys' evolutionary arms race with the pied flycatcher. Carl Zimmer has a summary here . Information Parasites? Who knew? (Except for IDC-ists, obviously....)

In the spirit of posting pictures from days ahead or behind, here's a Banded Rail (aka Buff-banded Rail) that I found in New Zealand early this year. I was in tomorrow (relative to where I usually am) when I took this

--------------Flesh of the sky, child of the sky, the mindHas been obligated from the beginningTo create an ordered universeAs the only possible proof of its own inheritance. - Pattiann Rogers

Here's last evening's obligatory insufferably cute sea otter mom and pup photo. Mom caught the crab, as you can see the pup snatched a leg. Two mom-and-pup pairs feed in the same place almost every evening in the Moss Landing lagoon and I can't get enough of them, not to mention the marbled godwits, long-billed curlews, willets, dowichers, peeps, white pelicans, red-breasted mergansers, cormorants and the like that hang out on the mudflats nearby.